Finance Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[Harriett McLachlan]

I'd like to speak to that.

I grew up in violence and experienced child sexual abuse from a very young age. It has crossed my mind over my 50 years to take my father or my mother to court for some kind of compensation. Now they're in their eighties, and it's not possible. But it has crippled me, and I ended up walking on my ankles, on my knees, to move forward to try to put the pieces of my life together. If there were some kind of compensation, as a victim, with that kind of thing, as a child, absolutely, 1,000%.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you.

Can you elaborate and expand upon the role of poverty in social problems? And perhaps elaborate as well on how making poverty history would act as a positive stimulus to the economy, even though there might be an initial investment in terms of taxation.

[Rob Rainer]

Right.

Poverty is linked to a range of negative outcomes. It's been shown that right from birth poor nutrition can affect brain development, capacity for learning, and so forth. So it's right from that very starting point.

And then as children move through their young years, if the proper supports aren't there, if the parents are under stress, if there's divorce, parents absent from the household, a whole range of things influence child outcomes, child development. So you end up with a large percentage of young people who move into their adult years ill-prepared for what we face as a society.

Obviously, investing in those early years is critical. The chief public health officer has written extensively on this. Again, we need to be doing a lot more in that area. It's one of the top thematic concerns that we and many organizations have: looking at early childhood development and care.

I know time is brief here, so I'd say that just with that one issue alone, we have so much more we could be doing. And we know that downstream, when adults have had those supports, they're going to be able to participate in the kind of economy we were just talking about for northern Alberta and other regions. If we want to have skilled people able to innovate and be creative, you have to invest in those early years. We could be allocating more resources there, for sure, and maybe taking away from other areas that aren't as critical.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I'd like to thank you so much for your transparency.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Nicholls.

We'll go to Mr. Armstrong, final round, please.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Knight, I've got 18 years of experience as a public school educator and some years at the post-secondary level as well. There have been two programs I've been very supportive of, and I think they've gone over very well at the small college and university level, at least in Atlantic Canada. One would be the Canada Excellence in Research Chairs, and the other would be the knowledge infrastructure program.

Have those been as supported across the country by the educational community as they have been in Atlantic Canada?

[James Knight]

Absolutely. The knowledge infrastructure program was widely celebrated across Canada. It really made a difference, and we were proud to be a participant in it.

The first program you referenced is more targeting universities than colleges, although I have to say that there have been some developments. In the last budget there were some suggestions of investment in applied research chairs in colleges, which we welcome very much also.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Great. Thank you for that.

You said in your presentation that one of your requests was to commit 5% of research and development spending to colleges, particularly targeted towards the SME sector. I think you quite responsibly said you're not looking for new money; you're looking for the reallocation of the existing budget.

Do you have any suggestions of where we would move it from? Where would we cut in order to do that?

[James Knight]

Well, I think you'd have to look at some of the pure research programs that are very costly and often produce no economic outcomes. They're all very interesting, but will they produce an economic outcome? I think we have to think about our investments in research in relation to economic activity.

Our suggestion is that you will probably get more bang for your buck by putting more into SME-applied research partnerships with colleges than you get in very large, very expensive investments, which may or may not produce economic outcomes.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'm going to pick up on something that my colleague Mr. Jean was speaking about. As he mentioned, we often joke with each other that a large percentage of my residents actually live and now work in his riding because that's where the jobs are. I know several of these young people personally. In fact I've had several ex-students who are now working in the oil sands in Mr. Jean's riding.

There is a difficulty, and I think he's onto something there. When they leave our community college system in particular and move out there to take positions, they don't have the necessary requirements. I think Syncrude and the other big companies would partner with some of the community colleges if there were a proper tax incentive in place so they could do it.

Would there be support in the educational community to do something like that, so we can train our people out east and prepare them for future positions out west, let's say, from the Muskrat Falls project, from fibre optic linesmen jobs, which are going to be to coming up? Would there be some support for that initiative?

[James Knight]

I want to emphasize that there is a lot of private sector engagement with colleges, but I think this is an interesting thought that we should explore further. I think there's an opportunity here.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I appreciate that.

I do have one more question, if I have time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Very briefly.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'm going to go back to Mr. Grant on the smoking issue, the contraband tobacco issue.

You said that 43% of high school students who are currently smoking are actually smoking illegal cigarettes. Is there already legislation in place to deal with this? Is this more of an enforcement issue or is it more of a legislative need? And if it is a legislative need, what can we do?

[Gary Grant]

It is an enforcement issue. It's a legislative need as well. Some of the laws that have been in place have restricted officers in what they could do, but that has been slowly improving. There are powers of search and seizure.

I think now it's more of a let's get to the source of the contraband tobacco issue and a public awareness issue. And it's a resource issue. A lot of police services are very busy and they don't have enough time to be dealing with guns and gangs and drugs and domestic calls and sexual assaults and then look for the kids buying cigarettes from the backs of cars.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today, for your presentations and responding to our questions. I do apologize about the shortness of the time, but we are trying to hear from as many organizations and individuals as possible.

Colleagues, we do have committee business, in particular we have a motion, so I'm going to thank our guests and then I'll ask our colleagues to stay at the table.

We'll suspend for a minute and then start with committee business.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I would ask colleagues to take their seats, please, and we'll move to committee business.

I will recognize Mr. Hoback, who will be presenting his motion.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, members, for taking the time so we can go through this motion today.

Mr. Chair, would you like me to read the motion and then go through it from there?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I think everybody has the motion, so let's just go to the debate.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Is everybody comfortable with doing this motion out of camera? Is everybody comfortable with that?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We're not in camera, we're in public now.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

It's fine? Okay.

Basically I'm trying to create a system so that when a private member's bill comes forward, we as the finance committee and members of Parliament can actually have an idea of what the costing of that private member's bill will be and what the impact will be to the treasury. So when we go to vote on a private member's bill, which a lot of us vote on independently because they're not government-whipped votes, it will give us a better breadth of knowledge as we make that decision, so we have all the information in front of us.

There was a history in the last session of private members' bills coming through with no costing done, and the impact would have been substantial. I also have examples where he has done costing and provided some really good information on certain private members' bills. That allowed members who were voting on bills to make educated decisions on whether or not to support them.

It's one thing to have a piece of legislation from a private member come forward. In intent, it sounds really good. But when you see the financial consequences, you have to sit back, weigh them, and ask if this is really the best use of Canadian taxpayers' dollars.

That's the intent behind this. He has the facilities, staff, and budget to do this. All we're doing is formalizing the routine so that we as a committee, which he reports to in this case, will see this. Then we'll be able to proceed forward on private members' bills with a complete deck of information. That's the intent behind the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Hoback.

I have Mr. Jean and Monsieur Giguère.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Having been on this committee just a short period of time, I think it's a great idea, and I commend Mr. Hoback for it.

I also see that a second motion will soon be before the committee, and it seems to be very consistent with this motion. I don't know why we wouldn't just deal with them as one motion. The first one could be amended to include exactly the recommendations in the second. They're very similar.

Unless anybody, or Mr. Hoback himself, has any opposition to that, I would like to make a friendly amendment to it. It seems it would be consistent to include that.

Does everybody have a copy of the motion? It was sent out a couple of days ago. It deals with the Parliamentary Budget Officer's mandate to provide independent analysis, and that on....

Can I read it into the record, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Jean, should we deal with this one first?